User talk:Headbomb/Archives/2023/August

MAGnificent

Hi Headbomb, you beat me to fixing the MAGA garbling of some references in Tree. These were created by accident when I was editing. Thanks for fixing them. I was able to fix the only other affected article (Gnetophyta). Another editor alerted me about a week ago, but it took me a while to find out how to edit citations.

I must have looked like a vandal. To make myself feel better, I'll explain what happened. Those changes were the side-effect of an automated browser add-in I use (and created) that fixes irregular acronyms like Nato, Maga, etc. to their canonical forms NATO, MAGA, etc. Among many other automated edits. But I didn't remember to turn it off when editing, my bad for sure.

Stay well — Codexor Codexor (talk) 18:06, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

No worries, it happens. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:07, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

MAGnificent

Hi Headbomb, you beat me to fixing the MAGA garbling of some references in Tree. These were created by accident when I was editing. Thanks for fixing them. I was able to fix the only other affected article (Gnetophyta). Another editor alerted me about a week ago, but it took me a while to find out how to edit citations.

I must have looked like a vandal. To make myself feel better, I'll explain what happened. Those changes were the side-effect of an automated browser add-in I use (and created) that fixes irregular acronyms like Nato, Maga, etc. to their canonical forms NATO, MAGA, etc. Among many other automated edits. But I didn't remember to turn it off when editing, my bad for sure.

Stay well — Codexor Codexor (talk) 18:06, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

No worries, it happens. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:07, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

OAbot

I noticed your article on the Signpost. OABot appears to be broken to me, and it has been for a while. Does it work for you? Abductive (reasoning) 01:07, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm getting 503 errors (server unavailable). It worked fine earlier, so I'm guessing it's a temporary issue. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:12, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
It's been months for me. Abductive (reasoning) 01:17, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
I'd reach people at WP:OABOT then. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:19, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
I'm only mentioning it here since it's your article on Signpost that looks bad. Abductive (reasoning) 01:34, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
@Abductive: now fixed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:59, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
Great! Abductive (reasoning) 09:40, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2023 August 12

Hello, Headbomb,

Please do not ever nominate dozens of articles at the same time on the same day. It takes you minutes to file the AFDs and hours for the AFD participants to investigate each article. What I predict will happen is that there will be NO participation on most of these AFDs and they will just be relisted several times.

It's an unfair burden on our regular AFD participants to have to look for sources for all of these articles you've put up for review. Would you consider withdrawing at least half of these nominations and spreading them out over coming days or weeks? I realize that it is easier for you to just go, nominate! nominate! nominate! but it puts our reviewing editors at a severe disadvantage, at least the ones who take AFD seriously and who review articles and sources thoroughly. Please consider withdrawing some of these nominations right now, there is no prejudice against a future nomination. Thank you for considering this request. Liz Read! Talk! 01:20, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

It looks like WP:BUNDLE may be useful in this situation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:00, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
I nominated 11 articles, not "dozens". That's well within reason. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:45, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Cite magazine

Following up on your TS piece. Any movement in making this template properly active? It should be added to the Visual Editor menu, etc... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:48, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Whatever update there is would be on WP:VE and its talk pages, or on WP:REFTOOLBAR and its talk pages. Probably nothing moved because ... well it's the WMF and getting them to do anything is always a challenge. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:34, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

User:Randykitty/Thoughts on NJournals

Hi, I'm baffled that you remembered this, as I myself had completely forgotten about it :-))) Looks like that RfC is going to yet another "no consensus". I hope so, because if NJournals would fall, I don't see much reason for staying on WP. And just when I am getting more time to devote to editing here... As usual, many thanks for your efforts. I'm a bit burned out facing this unrelenting assault on many different pages by people that almost look like they don't want to understand what you and I are saying. --Randykitty (talk) 18:11, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think NJOURNALS can fail as it stands. All that means is it would remain and essay and not become policy. And yes, this is exhausting. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:14, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
Also, don't go, otherwise those who don't know any better win. We already lost DGG. We don't need to lose you as well. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:30, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Popping my head round the door to say thanks to you both (and Headbomb in particular for the Signpost article here). I don't edit much these days (sadly), but am always interested in ferretting out the obscure history of journals if needed (was going to add something to the discussion about that, but the discussion seems a bit of a car-wreck at the moment). Carcharoth (talk) 21:06, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Actually, if you are both reading this, would you be able to give your views on whether the notability or not of various academic awards has parallels with the notability of journals? It is sometimes (similar to journals) difficult to assess these in terms of notability. Some academic awards are low level, and some are clearly prestigious, but some (like journals) start off prestigious and decline over time. They never seem to end cleanly either. They can be an endless source of red-links, though I have no idea whether or how an article is needed on the latest recipient of one that I added here (relevant here are: molecular ecology and Molecular Ecology!). Oh, oops, I see I forgot about this! Randykitty may remember that... :-) I was surprised to see that so much activity has taken place on that article recently. Categories also seem the best way to navigate awards, such as: Category:Awards of the French Academy of Sciences. Carcharoth (talk) 21:33, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm very close to asking for a topic ban

Just so you know, I'm very close to going to WP:AE and asking for a topic ban as you have now demonstrated a WP:PROFRINGE attitude at Journal of Cosmology which is about the most absurd and asinine thing I've seen you do in all this. Please don't lose your head. You are a longtime and valuable contributor, I don't want to have to do this, but if you keep going down this road, I see no other option.

jps (talk) 17:25, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm equally close to getting an AE against you for the very same reason. Take it to the talk page. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:28, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

This should go without saying:   There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Olive branch

jps (talk) 20:39, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I wrote a message that got eaten by the software. Long and the short of it is that this diff made me realize that our fundamental difference is probably about audience. I absolutely know dullards that will get confused by an infobox saying "Journal" when the subject is one as ridiculous as the one over which we lately squabbled. My guess is that your company may not be as undereducated as mine. Anyway... that's all I had. jps (talk) 20:41, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to WP:AGF here and accept it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:43, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
I don't know about a difference of audience, but I come from a perspective of using words to mean what words means, and not what a reader might imply. If it's written "a journal of blah" and the journal is shit, it does not cease to be a journal, or being about blah, because it is shit. The solution, IMO, is to write "a shit journal of blah" or similar (a journal of blah, which has been described as "shit" by So-and-So), rather than "a notjournal of notblah" with an unwritten "because if it were a journal of blah that would mean it's not shit". Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:51, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
If I reference a "journal" on a subject, the connotation is normally that the journal is reliable, well-written, peer-reviewed, worthy of reading, etc. The actual definition of "journal" is, in point of fact, none of that, but that does not matter when I am helping my students learn the currency of academic sourcing. Being broadminded about genre works for projects that desire to do comprehensive data science on as big a dataset as possible. Careful curation can allow them to see the difference between a journal that is written by an isolated hermit and a journal that is published by a legitimate professional society, but if we adopt this kind of broadmindedness into a general text, students will inevitably confuse the two because most sources that talk about journals adopt the connotation that I referenced. The clever have no problem with dealing with that. It's the dullards who stumble. And I have seen plenty stumble. jps (talk) 21:06, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
Well, that's why we don't consider JOC to be a reliable source, and we, by far and large, don't cite it save for some WP:ABOUTSELF stuff.
I wrote a paper on the physics of bouncing balls. In it, I cite a journal that publishes science done by high school students. It is not an endorsement of the quality of the journal, and it is not a journal anyone would cite to establish a scientific claim. But that's not why it's cited. I was citing it to establish that something was done in high school science class. It's actually a very wonderful journal in terms of what it's doing getting high-school students to do: ideas being tested by experiment, even if it falls short of what a qualified scientist would do.
Anyone that assumes all citations are positives, or alternatively that citations are endorsements of the claims made in the paper, well, they've got big issues. Is ISB Journal of Science a scientific journal? Yes. Is it peer-reviewed? Yes (by high school teachers and other high school students). It would not be wrong to write "ISB Journal of Science is a peer-reviewed scientific journal". The issue here is that it's an incomplete description, rather than an incorrect description. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:35, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
If it was just ISB Journal of Science we were talking about or Journal of the American Association of Variable Star Observers or any of another niche, small peer-reviewed (sub)-undergraduate-level journals that I know and love, this would not be our conversation. The problem is when you have students who want to write their term paper on Bob Lazar. That's where bright lines help the most. jps (talk) 22:35, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
The same principle applies. Someone could write "Bob Lazar is an American physicist born in 1959", and this would be 100% correct (physicist simply means someone who does/studies physics). But it's also not a complete picture. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:15, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
The implications are right there in front of you. Wikipedia is the first stop on many students' journeys. Let's help them not have it be the last. jps (talk) 23:43, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Sanditon

Could you elaborate on the references you are referring to?? 2.126.85.137 (talk) 21:28, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

You'll have to be a bit clearer as to what you mean here. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:20, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Combinatorial Theory (journal)

Which GNG coverage? None of the sources are independent. And zlb and mr are not really very selective, but rather inclusive. At best, this is TOOSOON. --Randykitty (talk) 21:40, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Use of the guideline Wikipedia:Point

I noticed that you reference Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point quite often in discussions. However I just wish you were more a bit clear with how an action constitutes disruption to Wikipedia when you cite that guideline and what point the referent is trying to make with their actions. I think your comments will sound friendlier this way. Cheers, Ca talk to me! 03:51, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I don't think you are doing this in bad faith. Others were quite incivil with you in NJOURNAL discussions and whatnot, and I can see myself saying something akin to this too. Ca talk to me! 11:59, 31 August 2023 (UTC)